When treating an illness, physicians generally perform various examination in addition to than interview. Then, the physician selects a treatment method based on the diagnostic data included in the clinical findings and the obtained examination result and relying on his own experience and perception.
The data used to analyze pathological conditions arising from causes that may manifest various symptoms of illness that are described in a patient's subjective complaints are normally only those examination values that can be measured directly, however, it may be difficult to precisely grasp and predict the patient's pathological condition and course just using the examination values depending on the disease. In the case of diabetes, for example, blood sugar level is an indicator of the severity of illness, however, the blood sugar level is nothing more than an examination result, and pathological conditions such as insulin secretory defect, peripheral insulin resistance, impaired hepatic glucose uptake, and excessive hepatic glucose release are still difficult to grasp from clinical findings even for specialists systems have been developed that support examination and treatment by providing the physician with information (treatment supporting information) useful in providing treatment (for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,421,633 and 5,971,922). Conventional systems only have functions for monitoring examination results, and simply providing drug dosages according to the examination results, and are fully utilized by physicians, but they can not provide treatment support information that can be used to determine the pathological condition and course of individual patients.
In the medical field, information concerning treatment effects (what level of treatment, at what stage to perform treatment and the like) is of the utmost importance, and a great deal of data has been acquired relating to treatment effects when specific treatment methods are used. In the case of cancer, for example, much data has been collected concerning the relationship between treatment method (surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and the like) and treatment effect (5-year survival rate and the like) in accordance with the progression and type of cancer. Furthermore, in the pharmaceutical field, data has been collected concerning the relationship between the treatment period and drug efficacy regarding subjects of different sex and age. It is possible to predict a particular level of treatment effect based on these data.
These data are based on the type of disease and examination values that are directly measurable, and although these are used as yardsticks to some degree in treatment effect, there is a loss of accuracy, and predicting treatment effect is often still dependent on the experience of the physician.